A.R.M.S. -- Woodside Management System's Advanced Reservation Management System continues to capture industry attention as new players gain access to the technology and speculation mounts concerning what role it will play in the future of the consortium and others now closely associated with it. A.R.M.S. represents the only substantive, successful piece of technology yet developed by an agency group while the attention it receives illustrates both the type of systems needed and desired by the industry as well as directions future vendor-based projects may take.

The system's extraordinary position was demonstrated most dramatically by Woodside's development agreement with Systemone, Inc., announced late last year, wherein, contrary to previous airline technology relationships, A.R.M.S. will become the basis of the first agency system to be added directly to an airline CRS.

There will never be another A.R.M.S, not because the concepts or physical components are so exotic or impossible to replicate, but because the political and market conditions that made the project possible will not soon come together to permit a similar joint undertaking. It is not that A.R.M.S. first showed agency-developed technology to be valuable to an airline (beginning with ADS many years ago and continuing through numerous systems acquisitions, agencies routinely proved that entrepreneurial technology rests more with them than the airlines), but rather that Woodside successfully positioned vendor relationships and exploited existing technology to produce a practical product.

Other consortia have not demonstrated similar member commitment (evidenced principally by the ability to raise capital) and, therefore, lack these most essential ingredients to any technology project.

When Woodside's highly successful corporate hotel program was launched, it soon became apparent that a mechanism was needed to route agency transactions (including car) to the appropriate vendor more efficiently than can be done using other CRS techniques. While standard hotel and car reservation packages serve a purpose, their technological limitations constrain the agent's ability to sell the complete extent of available inventory or provide rapid and secure reservations.

A.R.M.S. bypasses the CRS-based hotel and car sales system and interacts directly with the reservation networks of participating vendors, thus providing as accurate a representation as possible of true inventory and rate conditions for member agencies.

Typical CRS hotel and car booking packages are themselves independent inventory systems which may or may not be in sync with the vendor's own inventory base. A.R.M.S. by bypassing this intermediate step, achieves rate and inventory status equivalent to that available by telephoning directly to a vendor's central reservations office.

Because A.R.M.S. controlled or, in effect, "intercepted" agency sales messages, extensive value-added processing could be provided that handled special requests, resolved sold-out conditions (possibly by calling direct to desired properties in an effort to secure space), and accessed Woodside's proprietary discount corporate rate and block inventory system. This is the essence of the enhanced transaction processing offered by Woodside to its members and can represent not only competitive advantages but also processing efficiencies to an agency.

Central transaction processing also permits greatly enhanced MIS to be generated reflecting agency vendor usage patterns -- an unfulfilled objective of most other agency consortia.

Gaining the consent and active cooperation of so many vendors on a large scale is among the most notable accomplishments of agency cooperation through A.R.M.S. and eloquent testimony of the system's overall benefits to all participants -- agency and vendor.

Technologically it is neither the industry panacea nor the computer monstrosity some have suggested. A.R.M.S. is a conceptually direct processing system, functioning essentially as a message switch and communications network, that supports a complex processing environment and provides value to its users in spite of a cumbersome command structure (agents must use computerized transaction masks held in a CRS to properly construct an A.R.M.S. message) because those alternative hotel and car booking methods have lagged so far behind agent needs.

The CRS vendors, with numerous enhancements and maintenance projects demanding attention, have been mostly inflexible as to adding CRS features or services to meet certain market needs. Although there has traditionally been no shortage of valuable CRS enhancements from all vendors, these often fall short of adequately addressing long-standing processing inefficiencies, particularly hotel bookings, that plague agency operations.

Proprietary technology, as shown through A.R.M.S., can not only be non-threatening to a CRS vendor but can also significantly advance technological alternatives and new ways of handling old problems for all system users by proving their practicality and value. This also speaks to the value of cooperation in CRS development, abhorrent to some vendors, and the folly of technological isolationism.